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Taiwan ‘to cast cloud’ over Beijing talks

Taiwan will hang like a “dark cloud” over the sixth meeting of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in Beijing this week, according to a leading US-China expert.

“Over the past six years, Taiwan and China had made significant progress in normalizing their economic relations — but this progress hit a wall this spring,” Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Bush said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew are to meet with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang (汪洋) today and tomorrow at what is being seen as a critical time to work on stabilizing US-China ties.

“Neither Taiwan nor Hong Kong will likely be on the formal agenda for the S&ED, but they will hang like rather dark clouds over the proceedings,” Bush said.

He said the tensions in Hong Kong reached a new peak last week as nearly 800,000 people participated in an unofficial referendum in support of a liberal approach to electoral reform and hundreds of thousands braved bad weather to march in support of the same goal.